New era for Stamford schools

Published 6:47 pm, Friday, June 22, 2012

The hiring of a new superintendent of schools always brings new energy, the excitement of being at the start of a new era.

It usually brings some fear as well. Few jobs are trickier to navigate, and no one knows if the new person is the right fit for a school district or not, regardless of the resume he or she brings to town. There's a reason, many actually, why superintendents tend to last only a few years in a job.

Well, Stamford starts its new era with its new superintendent with none of that fear. Winifred Hamilton, who was named to the post Tuesday night, is a good fit for Stamford. She's been part of the school system for more than 40 years and very ably filled the superintendent position over the past year in an interim capacity.

She is well respected throughout the school system, city government and the general population. In the past year, she has demonstrated mastery of the budget process -- turning in a fiscally modest spending plan that still managed to create new education initiatives, such as a world language program in the elementary school. She has continued and built on the work of her predecessor to close the student achievement gap, including by introducing summer school for young students. She has started the process of exploring how to bring outplaced special education students back into the district, an initiative that could produce profound cost savings, providing, of course, it can be done in a way that meets the students' needs.

Stamford really could not have asked for more in an interim superintendent. Now that the qualifier has been removed from her title, we look forward to learning more about Ms. Hamilton's long-term vision for Stamford's schools.

What no one knows, of course, is whether Ms. Hamilton was the best candidate out there.

When she was hired Tuesday, more than a year had gone by since Stamford found out that its last superintendent, Joshua Starr, was leaving. Yet in that time Ms. Hamilton was the only person the Board of Education interviewed for the job.

That's not the way to hire for any position, let alone one this important, and it led to last week's drama in which four Board of Education members tried to forestall Ms. Hamilton's appointment and continue with a national search.

The five opposing board members who voted them down made the right decision Tuesday. At that point, continuing the search would have all but assured another year with an interim superintendent, too much instability when the city had a candidate of proven high quality ready to assume the role.

It's quite possible that a prolonged search would have come back to Ms. Hamilton in the end. But when it comes time that Ms. Hamilton leaves the post, whoever is on the Board of Education at that time should look back to this process as an example of how not to conduct a superintendent search.

But this board has some work to do as well.

During this process, one of the two consultants Stamford hired to search for a superintendent told board members that this board's reputation for not working well together would make it more difficult to find quality candidates who wanted to come here.

That's something current members of the Board of Education -- all of them, but starting with Board President Polly Rauh -- need to take to heart.

They were told they needed to work on board development, and how they function together. Ms. Hamilton should not expect support from the board for everything she wants to do. That's not the board's job. But she should expect a board that works well, where needless drama doesn't make an already difficult job even harder.

The board hired the consultant to help it find a superintendent. As it turns out, the board didn't make use of that service. It should, however, act on the other advice the consultant had to give.